That's How We Burn

Sub Pop;
2010

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Crack the spine on Jaill's Sub Pop debut, That's How We Burn, and you'll find a collection of mostly polished indie rock. The Milwaukee band's lead singer, Vincent Kircher, has a distinctive voice that is effortlessly melodic instead of grating. Everyone in the band can play their instruments pretty well, and sometimes they even indulge in solos. At the end of the day, Jaill sound like a bunch of guys who've been practicing in their garage for a while, and are pretty happy to get a chance to put out an album on a relatively high-profile indie label-- and they are, since the band's been toiling in obscurity for the better part of the last decade.

If a few of those points sound a little too average to you, well, that's sort of the problem. Although there are no duds here, a great deal of these songs sound like they're echoing trends already played out by other trad-indie bands. There's a couple of cuts on That's How We Burn that sound enamored with the nü-garage rock obsession that swept the early aughts, most notably on the album's weakest track, the Mooney Suzuki-sounding opener "The Stroller". And the gently stabbed guitar chords and vocal phrasing of "Thank Us Later", "Demon", and "Baby I" are reminiscent of Oh, Inverted World-era Shins.

That's How We Burn's sonic normalcy would all but consign the record for the used record bins if this band didn't sound so damn good when they break out of the mold. They have a way with hooks, and when they up the tempo, they sound like a twangier version of the Buzzcocks' punk-pop heyday ("How's the Grave"), or what would happen if the Soft Pack harbored a crush on XTC ("She's My Baby"). Even when Jaill quiet down, as they do on the acoustic "Summer Mess", the melody shifts pace to keep things moving.

Jaill exhibit the most promise on early single "Everyone's Hip". The song is pure pop overload, with hook after hook stuffed tightly within drummer Austin Dutmer's taut rhythmic fills. Kircher fits syllable after syllable into his own vocal endurance test, rattling off barely discernible lyrics and at one point breaking into what sounds like Spanish. The song is a weird pleasure, but it wouldn't sound out of place on mid-1990s alt-rock radio either. If they stick to that sound more in the future, it'll go a long way to making them sound more distinctive.